In a calm morning in March 1968, a shipment carrying the latest Korgs, Moogs and Hammond organs set off from Baltimore harbour, heading for an exhibition in Rio de Janeiro. The sea was steady, the containers safely attached. And yet later that same day, the ship would inexplicably vanish.

A few months later, it finally reappeared. Somehow, the ship had been marooned on the São Nicolau island of Cabo Verde (now Cape Verde, but then a Portuguese territory 350 miles off the west coast of Africa). The crew were nowhere to be seen and the cargo was commandeered by local police. But when it was found to contain hundreds upon hundreds of keyboards and synths, an anti-colonial leader called Amílcar Cabral declared the instruments should be distributed equally among the archipelago’s schools.

Overnight, a whole generation of young Cabo Verdeans gained free access to cutting-edge music gear. According to Frankfurt-based rarities label Analog Africa, this bizarre turn of fate can be directly credited with inspiring the island’s explosion of newly electrified sounds following independence in 1975, and has now been documented on its on its latest compilation, Space Echo – The Mystery Behind The Cosmic Sound Of Cabo Verde.

Some kid writing for the Guardian fell for the shipwreck story and the Guardian is such a good source that if they published it then it must be true.

Then there is the legend of the German accordeon coming to Columbia after a shipwreck:

Basic vallenato consists of three instruments:

The caja, a small drum played with bare hands like a bongo (which arrived along with the slaves from Africa)
The guacharaca, a small, ribbed stick that is scratched with a fork, making a sound similar to maracas. The guacharaca was originally used by indigenous Colombian tribes to hunt birds.
The accordion, of German origin. Stories vary about how this Teutonic instrument made its way into Colombian music; my favorite is that a ship full of accordions headed to Argentina sank off the Colombian coast.

Vallenato developed through cattle farmers who travelled from village to village selling their livestock

What's weird to me - in the Guardian a load of people below the line pointed out that it wasn't true, that the article missed out the stuff about it going to space and that Korg weren't selling keyboards until the seventies and so on... and the guy who wrote it came back on and said that it was definitely true and he'd checked it all out himself. Weird.

William Friedkin randomly picking up a white label of Tubular bells in Ahmet Ergun's office and then sending it to #1 in the US charts after popularising it via the Exorcist soundtrack.

Cue a fame-shy and anxiety ridden Oldfield retreating into seclusion and a variety of self-help, primal scream and psychotherapy programs, limiting his output and neutering his 'talents', thus saving the world from the further musical atrocities that would surely otherwise have ensued.

Tipped to this one by Woebot on his excellent glam edition of woebot radio

First, we must mention the case of one Marc Feld, an Eastern London boy and the son of a lorry driver. The 13-year-old Feld met Cochran outside the Hackney Empire, a theater in the London borough of Hackney, where Cochran had just played a concert. Cochran allowed the boy to carry his guitar out to his limousine. Feld later renamed himself Dib Cochran and fronted a band called The Earwigs, although that was sort a joke name, an homage to the performer who had inspired him. Marc Feld was at this time already becoming famous under another stage name, Marc Bolan. With his band T. Rex, Bolan helped create glam rock, and the band enjoyed a top-10 hit in America with "Bang a Gong (Get It On)."

But that wasn't the end of the saga of Cochran's guitar. After his death, when the guitar was impounded in Wiltshire, a young policeman used it to teach himself how to play. That policeman's name was David Harman, but he would soon change his name to Dave Dee and cofound a band called Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. This band became one of the first wave of the British Invasion, along with the Beatles. While Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich never enjoyed much success in the U.S. (although the charted with "The Legend of Xanadu"), they spent more weeks in the UK Singles Chart than The Beatles, and enjoyed unprecedented success worldwide.

[Joni Mitchell] taught herself guitar from a Pete Seeger songbook,[23] but the polio had affected her fingers, and she had to devise dozens of alternative tunings of her own. Later this improvised approach was "a tool to break free of standard approaches to harmony and structure" in her own songwriting.[24]

The Four Freshman - a huge influence on Brian Wilson and the Beach boys:

On March 21, 1950, The Four Freshmen got a break when band leader Stan Kenton heard the quartet in Dayton, Ohio's, Esquire Lounge. He "had been told at his own show earlier that night about a quartet in town that sounded like his 43-piece ensemble",[3] and was sufficiently impressed that he arranged for an audition with his label, Capitol Records, which signed them later that year.

Stevie Wonder visits Jamaica in October 1975 for the 'dream concert', a benefit gig for the Salvation army 'Jamaican institute for the blind' alongside the wailers & third world. During his stay he visits the institute where he meets a musically talented ten year old who lives on the premises on old hope road, and encourages the young man to pursue a career in music.

Frankie Paul goes on to dominate dancehall in the 80's and early 90's, working with virtually every label and producer on the Island and releasing some of the most enduring anthems of the era.